ABSTRACT
Southern Mesopotamia, an area variously dubbed the “cradle of civilization” and the “heartland of cities,” was home to a beer-drinking culture, and the archaeological record reflects that fact. A wide array of evidence exists for beermaking and consumption by the peoples of ancient Sumer, Akkad, and Babylonia (Map 10.1, Table 10.1). A sherd from a pottery jar found at the site of Jemdet Nasr and dating to the late 4th or early 3rd millennium B.C., for example, has the signs for jar and beer inscribed on the neck. The jar would have had a capacity of 25–30 1 (Englund and Grégoire 1991:9). At Lagash, D.P.Hansen (1980–83) uncovered a brewery of the mid-3rd millennium B.C. The brewery included tanks for the making of beer-bread (Sumerian bappir), a mixture of dough and aromatic herbs, and a large oven in which, according to the hymn to the beer goddess, Ninkasi, the beer-bread would have been baked (Civil 1964:72). A silver jar and a gold drinking-tube, probably used for drinking beer, were found in the tomb of the lady Pu-abi in the Royal Cemetery of Ur (Katz and Voigt 1986: fig. 11). Depictions of beerdrinking, for example, at banquets and during sexual intercourse, are common on cylinder seals (Woolley 1934: pls.193: 17, 20; 194:22–26, 29, 33), as well as on clay plaques (Parrot 1959b: 75; Saggs 1962: pl. 51C).
